


Fizz

by foreverhalffull



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Birthday Dinner, Chapter 74, F/M, Fluff, Getting Together, Post-Troubled Blood, The Night at the Ritz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:01:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26523358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreverhalffull/pseuds/foreverhalffull
Summary: THIS WHOLE THING IS ONE MASSIVE TROUBLED BLOOD SPOILER; IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED READING RUN AWAY NOW!"His eyes reflected the bubbles of his champagne as he tipped the flute to drink from it. She couldn’t help but follow the fizz with her eyes: his lips, the bob and tug of the column of his throat. She swallowed in time with him, though her glass still rested on the high table between them."
Relationships: Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 49
Kudos: 120





	1. The Ritz

**Author's Note:**

> Set immediately after _Troubled Blood_ ends. Enjoy!!

Robin rolled the cork between her fingers, already knowing it would find its home — not tonight, but soon, whenever she was back at her flat and reunited with the box— alongside another cork, and a pay stub from Temporary Solutions, a beautiful, carefully pressed flower which had once been used to re-enact a far less beautiful crime scene, and a receipt from a night of drinks which had been so painful at the time she’d second-guessed keeping it, but which had been illuminating. 

It wasn’t the first time Cormoran had bought her champagne and she decided in that moment, looking at the cork but seeing his smile, his sympathy, the two occasions in glaring contrast but the lightness in her heart the same, that the two occurrences should bookend either side of her singleness. She had thought months before that it would never be possible to tell him he was her best friend. And the night she did, when she had sported black eyes and Morris had earned them, it had felt still insurmountable to tell him she loved him. The words were impossible not to say, now. 

Cormoran’s first thought, when Robin offered the two samples — the two halves of her, one sweet and one heady – was that if he were to smell the perfume on her in the Land Rover, as she’d posed or excused her inquiry into his preference, he’d have to be really fucking close. In the backseat, maybe, though he found a commentary on the underlying wet dog scent of the vehicle to be more appropriate in the moment.

He enjoyed the way the smell wafted off of her wrists now, which moved gently to roll the cork of their shared bottle of champagne between her fingers.

Champagne had never been his favourite. He found it somewhat flavourless and the fizzing bothersome, but truly the negative association had stemmed from a long-ago argument with Charlotte, when a bottle had been cracked upon his right shoulder from behind, as if he were a ship she’d been christening.

There had been nothing holy or renascent about that experience but there was, now, ringing in a new decade with his Robin for the first time.

Desirous of thinking about something other than sex with Robin in the Land Rover, Charlotte’s unpredictable violence, or the probability he would be with Robin for her fortieth, fiftieth, or sixtieth birthday, he cleared his throat. 

“Are you excited for the dinner Ilsa’s planning tomorrow?”

She smiled. “I haven’t had a birthday party since— my twenty-first, maybe? And the restaurant looks lovely, though I don’t think it’ll top tonight."

He wondered whether she would let him buy her dinner later. It had felt too forward to lead with, having the both of them dressed smart and no plausible excuse to play it off as professional. But the comfortable pace of the evening, with its history of cheek-kissing and scent of musk, meant dinner felt now like the least risky suggestion on the agenda.

“Who all is coming?”

She rolled her eyes. “Max and his boyfriend, Vanessa and Oli, Sam and Hutchins and their wives: a million couples. Not terribly subtle, our Ilsa.”

Both smiled.

“Pat and her husband not invited?”

Robin furrowed her eyebrows. “I thought you didn’t like her.”

Strike laughed. “Did I not tell you I figured out why she didn’t like me?”

“World-class detective, you. What was it?”

“Look like her ex-husband.”

It was Robin’s turn to laugh now, and she did so loudly enough that it startled the next couple over.

“I knew it had to be something like that. There was no good reason—"

His eyes reflected the bubbles of his champagne as he tipped the flute to drink from it. She couldn’t help but follow the fizz with her eyes: his lips, the bob and tug of the column of his throat. She swallowed in time with him, though her glass still rested on the high table between them.

Something definitely happened when he met her eyes through the glass, though Robin was powerless to define it.

“How was your book?”

“Sorry?” She was still thinking of the look, the something, whatever it had been, and worried she’d missed whatever story had introduced the question.

“You said you’d got a new book to read in the bath last night?”

“Oh! Yeah. Historical detective fiction my cousin Katie recommended.” Robin laughed, and her expression communicated that he was the only one who could appreciate the coming sentiment.

“When she recommended it, she was like ‘Oh Robs, you may like this one, unless it feels too much like work!’ Didn’t realise that if it reminded me of work, that would be just about the strongest recommendation she could give.”

He laughed along with her. “You weren’t meant to be working, Ellacott. It was your time off. Well-deserved, too; now I might just have to force you on leave again tomorrow.”

She could think of only one way she’d like to spend a second consecutive day off but was terrified to suggest it.

“Hardly counts. It only took half an hour; I knew who’d done it by fifty pages in and just skipped to the reveal.”

His eyes crinkled in a fond slow blink to accompany his smile.

“If business slows down, we could consult for crime writers, help them make their cases more complex.”

“Sounds like a more reliable moonlighting gig than guessing holidayers’ dead relatives’ favourite flowers.”

The lightness between them had worked its way deep inside. He didn’t know when he’d last been so happy.

“Even though the plot was simple, it was a damn sight better than the occult shit we read this year. Refreshing.”

“I couldn’t throw away the Schmidt book or the Creed biography fast enough when we closed it.”

She laughed. “Me neither, nor Oakden’s shitshow. But I do still have the Tarot cards; right before I left home tonight I actually—"

She realised where the line of conversation would lead and clammed up. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to notice her suspiciously abrupt silence.

“Fuck me, Robin, you can’t make me believe in those things,” he said. But he was smiling, reaching out for her fingers and holding them loosely, so that his presence was felt and securing and fizz-producing, but never restricting.

She didn’t know whether his disbelief made her feel better – because he’d not likely ask further questions—or worse, because she so deeply wanted the cards’ answer to her non-question to come true.

The feeling of his fingers entwined with hers for the first time was certainly making it harder to think clearly.

“Well? Tell us what it said, then.”

“The problem card was peace,” she said slowly.

“Peace isn’t a problem,” he countered swiftly, having clearly been eager to discount it.

“That’s what I thought! Anyway, the second was adjustment.”

“Why would you need to adjust to peace? It’s … peace. Makes no sense.”

“Well, heaven knows we don’t exactly get loads of peace, you and me. Would be an adjustment if we did.”

“Speaking of,” he started, and she felt an immense drop, a relief, from the adrenalin which had pooled in anticipation of his commentary on the last card.

“I meant to say this when I was telling you about Pat, but I wanted to apologize for all I put you through at the office this year.”

“It’s –”

“No, it’s not fine.”

“I was going to say _not your fault._ You needed to be there for your family.”

“That wasn’t all of it, though. I put together a bad team and expected you to make it work. And didn’t check in, I had no idea what you were putting up with. Fuck, Robin. I put way too much on you.”

“We’re partners, Cormoran. We’re there for each other. We fix things for each other. It’s what we do.”

As she spoke, she tapped her chest gently with the hand that wasn’t resting in his. To her, the gesture was a callback to the first time they’d discussed – if such a nasty but necessary fight could be called a discussion—these aspects of their partnership. He wondered if the gesture was a subconscious indication of where their partnership resided within her.

He smiled fondly, almost wistfully at her. “What was the last one, then? The solution, is it?”

She felt her palms dampen and hoped he couldn’t feel it. Her heart beat so rapidly within her that it almost hurt.

She inhaled shallowly.

“Love.”

He stared. His champagne flute was halfway to his mouth and remained there for sixty painfully long seconds. She held his gaze, wanting to be almost anywhere else given the tension she feared would snap her when it broke, but on another level not wanting the moment to end for fear of how it would.

His voice was raspy when he next spoke, setting the glass down gently as he did so. 

“I know I _just_ said you can’t make me believe in those things.”

Her heart skipped. She had a feeling she’d end the night digging around some dusty lost and found bin for it, because there was no way it would manage to remain inside her. Had he really—

“But I do believe what it said. I believe in you, and that you could persuade or win over or coerce or command those cards to turn over and be meaningful and lead us to… finally…”

He squeezed her hand tighter and looked away for a moment. A dozen emotions flitted across his face at once, among them fear and passion and an expression not unlike the one Rokeby must have seen 32 years ago: a carefully and smartly dressed Strike, though mercifully without the snotty nose, and the hope of being wanted and welcomed after years of anticipation.

“This is the riskiest thing I’ve ever done, far riskier than enlisting, even, because if you don’t feel the same and it ruins things, you’re involved in every good thing in my life. But… _you’re involved in every good thing in my life,_ so how can I not?”

He pulled her left hand to his warm lips and kissed it, leaving it there against his mouth for a moment afterward as he gathered the courage, even though his sentiment had already been made known.

“I love you, Robin.” He nearly whispered the words. “I do. I can’t help it, not that I’m trying to resist it anymore. I love the person you make of me, and there’s not a single thing about you I don’t… You are my love, the singular one.”

She smiled and sniffled and blotted her tears with the hotel’s regrettably posh cloth napkin. She was as amazed and as incapable of speech as she had been when he told her she was his best mate the month prior.

“Fuck, Strike.” She smiled. He laughed at her apparently singular response to words of affirmation. “You… this was all benefit, no risk. I would have run away with you three years ago if you’d asked, and I would’ve run upstairs with you last month if you’d asked, and I would have worked alongside you for a hundred lifetimes, even when the love became unbearable to keep inside, if you never did. Because our partnership and the agency are the best things in my life, too, save for you. I love you too, Cormoran.”

He smiled with a radiance she’d not ever seen previously, and she noted that his left hand squeezed into a brief fist of overwhelmed and unexpected joy. He kissed her hand once more before releasing it to top up both of their glasses, which finished the bottle of champagne.

He raised his drink. “To a new decade. A good one.”

She clinked her rim with his. “With you,” she added, finishing the toast he hadn’t realised was a fragment. “And to new, but not newly found love.”

“With you,” he echoed. Both drank to their happiness, to many good years ahead and to the love which finally lay in the open air between them after many years in which neither had known how tightly to cling to it: as to a high bar over a chasm, white-knuckled, or as to a delicate porcelain teacup which would shatter under a firm grip?

As she finished her champagne, she was reminded of the fact that they were in a hotel. She had no idea what their starting rate was, and it was bound to be astronomical, but she wasn’t as skint as she’d been on her twenty-ninth birthday.

She looked up from their re-clasped hands to make eye contact. “I think it’s time we go upstairs, Strike, what do you say?”

His breath hitched. “I could buy you dinner first.”

“I’m not sure that’s quite the appetite I’ve worked up. But you’re welcome to order us room service. Later.”

This grin was different from his earlier, most radiant smile. It was devilish and lopsided and made his eyes crinkle in a way that continually suggested an impending, mischievous wink. The smile promised to do similarly crooked things to her, on her.

They rose simultaneously, Robin grabbing her handbag and he, the carefully wrapped perfume.

Robin had thought the tension after revealing the love card had been unbearable, but the knot between them grew, winding tighter and tighter as they made their way to reception and finally, to the lifts and finally, down the hall to their assigned room. Her secret worry was that her minuscule shreds of self-control would fail her, and she’d jump him the moment they crossed the threshold. Such an ambush was likely to break the perfume.

She walked steadily and resolutely through the entryway and to the low, padded bench along the wall where the hall opened into the wider bedroom area. As the door clicked smoothly into its latch, she set her handbag on the bench. Cormoran, confident in their sexual compatibility but terrified of moving too fast or being otherwise wrong, followed her lead and set the gift bag containing the perfume gently beside her handbag. 

She was six inches shorter than he, but in her heels her eyes reached the level of his nose. Her lips were perfectly placed to kiss his jawline, so she did, slowly from chin to ear. The fingernails of her right hand scraped gently up the back of his neck, from the bottom of his skull and into his curls as she did.

When her lips had reached his left earlobe, which was gifted a small peck of its own, she whispered, “Unzip me.”

His hands ghosted her waist like a dance partner's as she turned, and he was startled by the almost-humorous fact that he’d soon be seeing her mostly naked before ever having pressed his lips intentionally to hers. But he wasn’t one to deny Robin Ellacott of anything she asked of him, not least this. 

The dress was a clinging style and didn’t immediately pool to her feet when unzipped, but a firm tug on either side of the hemline did the trick, and she stepped out of it, getting yet closer to him in the process. Her bra and knickers were the same cobalt shade as the dress, and he wondered whether she had worn them under the dress the first time he’d seen it.

His left hand rested on her right side, where her abdomen began to widen out into hips. He let his thumb trail gently back and forth from navel to iliac crest and back again.

“Fuck, Robin.” Was it the second or third time he’d allowed the words to escape that night? He couldn’t count the times he’d thought them. 

He’d once had ethical barriers about imaging her nude, which had stemmed from his being her employer. They’d persisted when their partnership began, had been only marginally weakened by her leaving Matthew, and had been almost impossibly difficult to maintain when he’d admitted to them both that she was his best friend, because he’d seen her eyes flicker to his mouth and to the ceiling where his bed lay just above and to the door. If he had let himself imagine it, it would not have done reality justice.

“The fact that you’re the most perfect woman to ever walk the Earth is hardly new information, but _Christ._ You look _incredible._ It’s not fair you get to be the smart one and the beautiful one. The _most_ beautiful one.”

“Don’t kid, Strike. I’m hardly—”

He’d intended to kiss her properly next, but it would have to wait, because she needed a hug. “No, you are. You’re everything, Robin.”

He could feel her answering smile against his neck. “And _you’re_ overdressed, Strike.” She tugged gently on his tie.

“Maybe you’re underdressed,” he countered, not because he wanted her any more clothed but rather to keep up the teasing atmosphere.

“Hmmm,” she murmured. “No, the dress is definitely under _me.”_

She looked pointedly down at where it was pooled on the floor just behind her. He laughed aloud.

“Your dress does look like it could use some company on the floor,” he said, but her palms were already sliding under the shoulders of his jacket and guiding the sleeves down his arms. She somehow slipped it off behind him and lay it beside the bottle of perfume and her handbag.

“Suit’s too nice to let it crumple.”

“Thanks. S’new.”

“I noticed.”

“Course you did, my little detective, you. Fucking world-class, you are.” She smiled at his affirmations as she unbuttoned him. It was a necessary shame to remove the crisp shirt; as wonderful as their first hugs had been, the experience of his buttons directly against the thin lace cups of her bra was a sensation which put the others to shame.

She walked him backwards toward the bed, where he led her with his fingertips above hers in the process of removing his prosthesis. She’d wondered whether he removed shoes-then-leg-then-trousers or whether the trousers preceded the leg.

It was the former. Easier to separate the leg from the shoe when it wasn’t attached to his body, he’d said, along with a teasing comment about the motivation for her wondering. She’d flushed scarlet, though admitting her subdued imaginings was hardly putting herself out there, considering their current activities.

She sat back on her heels, allowing her left thumb to brush across his stump in a similarly smooth affection to the way he’d rubbed her abdomen. He stared questionably at her forehead, unable to make eye contact given her gaze which was fixed fondly and determinedly on his right shin.

“What are you thinking about, Ellacott?”

She blushed again. He hadn’t expected to find her so amusing in the bedroom, but she was. “I wanted to give your leg a little kiss; it deserves some tenderness for supporting you all day, but then I remembered those horrific acrotomophilia discussion boards I found looking for Kelsey Platt, and now it feels too weird.”

He laughed from deep within his belly. The bed shook. “I doubt I’d be able to feel it, even, the nerve endings are such a mess down there.”

Taking his statement as a challenge, she pressed the smallest of kisses to the tip of it and looked back to his face for feedback. He shook his head. She continued the chaste pecks in a row toward his knee, though he truthfully let her keep going a couple of kisses past the point where he regained feeling, until he knew the ruse would become unbelievable. When he finally nodded, she placed a second kiss to the farcical sensory demarcation and grinned up at him triumphantly.

“Are you sure you’re not into that sort of thing, love?” She knew he was teasing by the champagne-bubble shine in his eyes.

She returned his smile as she stood, but her answer was serious. “Only so far as I’m into you, Cormoran Blue.”

She kicked off her heels then and joined him on the bed, straddling him and kissing him, remarkably for the first time, on the mouth.

“When you picked me up for our last visit to Anna and Kim’s, and you made that comment about beards, I wanted so badly to ask whether you were one of the women who liked them.”

She laughed and rubbed her hand along his jawline, which had been cleanly shaved for the occasion. “Well, Matt could never grow one properly. Too ticklish. But yours, I think… could be thick enough to really add something down there, maybe.”

“Were you thinking about that in the car?”

She blushed more prominently than ever before, burying her head in his bare shoulder and shaking slightly in embarrassment and laughter at herself.

He was floored. “You dirty girl, you. I didn’t know you had it in you, Ellacott, imagining us in bed while I’m sat innocently beside you…”

“I was so glad when you brought up Dave fucking Polworth; I had no idea what would’ve come out of my mouth if you hadn’t.”

“Could we maybe _not_ talk about Chum right now?” He grazed his hand up her side by way of another suggestion. “I’d rather explore that whole… _what comes out of your mouth_ thing.”

For all her earlier mortification, she now had cheek in spades. “Or maybe, we could explore what goes into it instead?”

Cormoran was truly speechless; his jaw dropped. That was not a quote he’d be forgetting anytime soon. To his own surprise, he laughed again, though this time his head dropped into her shoulder like hers had done to him.

She poked his ribs. “Don’t take the mick, Strike, it was a genuine offer.”

“It’s _your_ birthday." 

“Maybe I like doing it.”

“Maybe there are other things I wanted to do first.”

“Mmmm. Maybe that would be okay, then. Later,” she said, a bit fizzy from the feeling of his hands on her.

He removed her from his lap and twisted his body sideways to place her against the pillows behind him. He stayed in the half-rolled-over position he’d landed in, facing her on his side while she laid on her back. 

“This okay?”

He didn’t want to assume she would be okay with his propping himself above her, but she pulled him atop her with a hand slipped under the waistband of his boxers, squeezing his buttock.

“Better than.” Any thoughts which may have formed a more robust employee satisfaction review were obliterated by the feeling of his lips alternately sucking and kissing little marks into her clavicles, neck, and breasts. She gasped.

He was only halfway through his journey of exploring her body – indeed, he hadn’t yet indulged in the ever-important snacks – when a disastrous, night-ruining reality occurred to him. He let his head rest heavily against her chest for a moment, so disappointed was he in the realisation.

“Fuck. I haven’t got any protection. Fuck, I’m so sorry, Robin.”

She was touched that he didn’t even suggest something which may have made her uncomfortable, but rather accepted what he saw as his fate without pressuring her.

“I’m clean,” she said, running her hand through his unruckable curls as she spoke. “And I’ve an IUD.”

“I’m clean, too, and fuck knows it’s been bloody ages.” He grinned at her, the promisingly crooked one from downstairs. “You’re sure?”

She nodded and without warning, grabbed him fully. “Just _now,_ if you please.”

“But Robin, I haven’t even –”

“I’m plenty turned on. Promise.”

Strike felt he deserved an award for not exploding on the spot, so wonderful was the feeling of her. Her pleasure was written clearly on her face, but she was quieter than he’d expected.

“Ellacott, I need some encouragement, or I’m going to start thinking you’re not enjoying this,” he teased. Stringing together this many words in light of the million neurons firing for other purposes deserved nearly as much of an award as his earlier accomplishment, and he hoped the careful focus would buy him time on that front.

Her reply was delayed, and when she did speak, it was broken repeatedly by pants and moments of mind-numbing she shouldn’t have been expected to think coherently through, let alone speak. 

“I was always… loud… when I was... faking, but – fuck!”

With that exclamation, her head rolled back against the pillows, breaking their powerfully erotic eye contact. Her insides contracted, pulling him in deeper and indeed over the edge, and as talented as his Robin was both undercover and under covers, he wasn’t sure how any woman could ever fake _that._

When he was finally spent, he kissed her lips gently, reverently.

“Many happy returns, Ellacott.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my first attempt at pseudo-smut, even though it wasn't super explicit, so sorry if it reads super awkwardly!  
> The next chapter will be the dinner party! I'd initially considered doing two alternatives endings, one where everything goes swimmingly the next day and the other where this ends up being a one-night stand, but after writing all the emotion into it I don't know that I can, though I do love to read some drama, haha.


	2. Dinner Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all of your unbelievably lovely comments on the first chapter! I hope you enjoy this one as well :) and many thanks especially to BookMouseGirl for helping me get my brain through a particular present🥰

When Cormoran woke on the morning of October tenth, it was to the rare sensation of complete rest and utter bliss. Given that he'd slept on the most luxurious mattress his back had seen in years, he should've. But before he'd even opened his eyes, he knew the bed was far from the primary reason for his peace and joy.

No, she lay next to him.

Robin was clothed only in half a bedsheet and the new opal necklace which must have been a birthday present, and it cast blue-green sparkles about the room as it caught the morning light. It was not an image he would soon forget.

He lay on his back, and she was curled on her side with her head on his chest rather than the pillows, cuddling his right arm with her entire body like he was a teddy. Her right leg lay just at the end of his own; she completed him.

His arm was asleep, but he didn't mind. How could he, when this was what he'd wanted, forever?

"Morning, sleepyhead."

His interruption was not welcomed, though he couldn't imagine her dreams were any better than the ones he was watching with his eyes open. She groaned softly, and one hand relinquished its grip on his arm to walk its way up his chest and clamp gently over his mouth. She didn't know that the scent of it, reminiscent of their late-night activities, did little to help her in convincing him to go back to sleep. He was up now, and he didn't want to waste a single moment with her.

“W’time izzit?”

Her morning voice was breathier rather than raspier than her usual timbre. His library of Robin-voices was expanding rapidly. There had been the many she used on the phone, even in early days, to disguise herself to people from whom they needed information. It had seemed to take ages before he earned the friendly mates' tone of banter, and then there were the glacial months of her marriage, which had had a voice of their own that he only later learned to attribute partially to depression. And last night, he'd confirmed that the new lilt he'd noticed in recent months was, as he'd hoped, that of her flirting. And he'd learned the intimate whisper of his name after she climaxed, which he'd thought could never be topped, but it was certainly a fair tie with the sound of her first thing after waking.

She’d removed his watch after his shirt last night, and he couldn't see the bench on which it lay from his position on the bed. Judging by the amount of light filtering in, he answered, “Nine? Ten, maybe?"

She sat abruptly with a panicked Yorkshire curse.

"What's the matter?"

“We’re late.”

Though she couldn't see his face, which was behind her, she could feel when he rolled his eyes.

"I told you, it's your punishment for working during your real day off. You're not allowed to go in today."

"But the only way I'd enjoy staying home would be with you. And we can't both play hooky.”

"It's our agency."

“’S’not right to play favourites." 

"Everyone knows you’re my favourite, Ellacott. They'll hardly be surprised.” He grabbed the hand which rested on his stomach and kissed her palm twice, ever so gently. Then, speaking through her fingers, he said, “Plus, you're everyone else's favourite, too. They'll support me."

She smiled cheekily down at him over her shoulder. "Not when it means more work for them, they won't!"

A faint buzzing emanated from the bench where they'd abandoned their belongings, as if they'd conjured their colleagues by talking about them.

"Tenner says that's Pat, wondering why I'm not in," Robin said as she padded across the plush carpet to reach her phone.

"Hell no, that's a sucker’s bet. Course it's her! Too damn punctual."

Robin looked up from the screen of her phone to Cormoran's face. 

"Shame, you could've won off me. It's Sam.”

She sat back down on the bed beside him as she spoke, with her legs spread but heels together in a butterfly stretch. It stung just slightly from the unfamiliar exertion the muscles had endured the night before.

"Alright, Boss?” Barclay greeted her. "How was your birthday?"

"It was lovely, thanks, how's your morning?"

“Good, good. Listen, ye ken where Strike is?"

She looked down at him presently, looking thoroughly rumpled and clearly able to hear the conversation going on about him. He winked.

"No, ‘fraid not. D'you need something?"

“I'm meant tae meet the footballer for the first time this mornin', an' I wanted tae chat with him before."

“You’ve tried calling him?" Robin hadn't heard his phone ring, but she'd be quite concerned for their employ if a detective couldn't manage that basic first step.

"Straight tae th’answerphone. Must be dead, an' I wouldnae think he'd let it die if he's out on surveillance, but I wen' up to his flat and knocked an' he's no in."

Robin became suddenly aware of a ticklish sensation ghosting up the inside of her right thigh. Not wanting to embarrass herself and Cormoran, and optimistically attempting to uphold the ruse that she was neither aware of his location nor concerned about it, Robin swatted Cormoran’s hand out from between her legs.

Her hand made contact far more forcefully than she'd intended, and a loud smack rang out through the room. Her eyes widened and she turned to him with an expression of abject horror, mouthing her frantic apologies. He winced and shook out his already-reddening hand, but seemed to be struggling more with suppressing his laughter than with the pain.

"All good, Robin?”

“Hmm? Yeah, all fine here. Yep!”

“I heard a clatter."

"Just a balloon that popped. Nothing major."

"Not that donkey one, I hope. Took Strike feckin ages tae find it."

 _Awww._ Strike rolled his eyes at her exaggeratedly endeared expression, and it took Robin a moment to remember she owed Barclay an answer.

"Nope! Just a plain one. My flatmate decorated yesterday, bless him."

"Aw, nice guy. He’ll be there tonight?"

"Yep!"

"Looking forward to it."

“Yep! Listen, let me know if you need anything for footballer, and I'll ring if I hear from Cormoran?”

Barclay laughed. "Someone's keen to ring off! See you tonight, Boss.”

“See you."

The moment Robin cut the call and set the phone on the nightstand on her side of the bed, Cormoran erupted into laughter. He pulled her atop him but was shaking so heavily from laughing that Robin worried she may fall off.

"God, Strike, I am so sorry. Did I hurt you?"

He shook his head, still laughing, but she kissed his hand in apology anyway. He tapped his lips in indication of where her kiss would be better appreciated. She laughed and complied, quickly and chastely, ignoring the dual invitations of his hands on her hips. 

"As you've heard, we've gone and made ourselves too useful to disappear for a day. Let's make a move."

"I'd rather make a move on you."

She rolled her eyes but couldn't keep from smiling. How had she not foreseen his being such a cheeky flatterer?

His smirk and roving eyes worked in tandem to set every bit of her they lazily surveilled on fire. She worried he could tell by the flush she felt erupting across her chest and spreading beyond.

“Compromise?”

"Mmm. What have you got in mind?"

"Shower. Part productive, part...” He dipped a finger, tantalizingly briefly, into her navel and let his hand track slowly, warmly down. "Pleasure."

Her quaky reaction initially intensified his self-satisfied, highly aroused smirk, but it was replaced by a jaw-dropped expression of pure, validated, and shocked affection when she climbed over him to leave the bed, opened her small handbag, and produced the collapsible flats she brought to work for surveillance alongside skimpy knickers and an unwrinklable autumnal crepe dress in the same shade as her hair.

"Were you planning on a night out all along, Ellacott?"

"Do I strike you as the type of person who makes a jump this big without planning ahead, and being entirely sure?"

"No. Just presumptuous, 's'all."

She laughed. "I'm a detective. I knew you wanted me."

***

Everyone except Cormoran, from whom she’d decided after a lengthy debate to arrive separately, was seated at the table in the private room of the restaurant Ilsa had booked when Robin arrived a couple of minutes before the dinner was set to start. Two seats remained empty in the centre of the table, and Robin wondered whose idea it had been to ensure she and Cormoran sat next to one another. 

Her bets were on either Ilsa or Vanessa having convinced the other, as the awkward arrangement of the four-by-two seat table meant that both of them were sat across from rather than beside their partners on the edges of the table, while Max and his boyfriend and Andy and Louise filled out the heads and feet of the table respectively. Robin removed her coat and hung it over the back of the empty chair beside Vanessa and across from Sam.

“Happy Birthday!” 

Vanessa stood excitedly to hug Robin the moment her coat had been removed. “Lovely outfit, doll.” 

She was wearing a black jumpsuit with off-the-shoulder sleeves, a flattering waistline, and flowy trousers which had the appearance of being wide-legged without being terribly loose. Its formal length also meant it covered her heels, giving her the appearance of being ethereally tall. She knew it was one of her best looks and hoped Cormoran would like it.

“Oh, you’re too sweet Van, thank you!” Robin kissed the air beside each of her cheeks. The action unfortunately set off a domino effect of a receiving line, with one couple after the next standing to hug her and wish her well for the year.

When she reached Sam, halfway around the circuit, his eyes were twinkling playfully. She should have suspected what came next. 

“I was telling Max how lovely it was of him to decorate the flat for you.” He winked as she swallowed and held his gaze, not willing to admit her lie even though she’d been found out.

Sam’s wife Nat, who’d been the recipient of an excessively giddy phone call at her lunch break and thus had some idea of what information was being exchanged and denied, rolled her eyes and introduced herself to Robin, who complimented her cartilage piercings. She’d enjoyed the look of artificial ones undercover, but worried about the pain of them, which Nat assured her wasn’t too bad.

By the time she was delivered back to her seat, Cormoran had arrived, and he greeted her with what he hoped passed for a friendly kiss on the cheek.

“You look beautiful,” he whispered against her skin. It reminded her of the way he’d delivered the same words at her wedding, and she was pleased that she could now swoon over them without the caveat of her husband’s existence and the honesty-undermining obligation to say the words at such an occasion as a wedding.

“When did you lose the beard?” Andy asked Cormoran as he sat. It had been a while since the co-workers had seen one another.

“Couple days, maybe?” Cormoran rubbed his clean-shaven jaw as he thought about it. “Glad to be shot of it; too long in the army and I feel dirty when I let it grow.”

“Too right, mate. Glad I donnae have tae make myself into an ugly bastard for the job,” Barclay teased.

Cormoran chuckled. “Don’t flatter yourself, Barclay. You can leave the stardom up to me and Ellacott.” He nudged her playfully with his elbow and she grinned covertly back while the rest of the group laughed.

“At least Robin gets to make herself pretty,” Oli joked. “I came home most days when she was staying with us wondering who the hell was in my kitchen; I thought Vanessa had vastly expanded her repertoire of friends.”

She laughed good-naturedly, but he hurried to add, “Not that Van needs to expand, and not that you’re not beautiful already! Shit, sorry.”

From the opposite corner of the table, Nick diverted the conversation to put a stammering but well-meaning Oliver out of his misery. 

“It is quite fascinating to see what she comes up with, isn’t it?” He looked to Ilsa. “Remember a couple of weeks ago when she came by the house for a work catch-up with Cormoran, and she looked like a complete bottle blonde? And with the brown eyes and that Marilyn Monroe beauty mark... I told her she had the wrong address!”

Robin laughed. "Cormoran was still asleep when I came up; he thought he was dreaming."

Cormoran joined her in laughing at their collective memory, his head tossed back. Most of the guests stared; none except the Herberts was familiar with seeing him in such a relaxed and happy state. Max remembered with amusement how he’d asked Robin whether her partner was very different sober. "Less of a dick" was quite the understatement. Why would he ever hide such beautiful teeth away behind a façade of grumpiness?

“I quite liked Bobbi Cunliffe, the goth girl for the Wiccan shop,” said Hutchins, who had only seen her in the getup once or twice.

“Bobbi was a classic.” Cormoran smiled down at her fondly.

Vanessa’s contribution to the conversation was almost unintelligible, but by the powerful laughter interrupting her comments, Robin was quite sure she knew what the woman beside her was trying to say.

“And – that one time you had to – pretend – to be a furry – for that convention last year!”

Everyone around the table started laughing at Robin’s expense. “Oh my God, Vanessa! That was the longest three days of my life.” 

She began to bury her head in her hands but wrenched it back upright instantly when she saw Max tilting his phone screen suspiciously discreetly toward his boyfriend Lucas.

“Don’t you fucking dare, Maximilian, or so help me I will train Wolfgang to shit on your pillowcases.”

He didn’t look threatened. Lucas joined in on the laughter, and Robin was relieved when Sam seemed to save her from the unwanted attention. She’d forgotten that until a moment before, she’d spent most of the meal on edge, his wink concerning her that he may ask about her and Cormoran’s simultaneous disappearance that morning.

“Robin is great with what she can hide under some makeup. Keeps her in business when the rest of us would have been made, for sure.” 

Ilsa hummed her agreement and regaled her side of the table with Robin’s non-disguise makeup skills and mishaps from the time she’d helped Ilsa get ready for a work event when she was living with the Herberts years before.

While Ilsa was still talking, Barclay made eye contact with Robin and gestured with his hand to the right side of his neck, as if to alert her that she had spilled something. He seemed to be mouthing _you’ve got a little something,_ though the Scottish shapes of his vowels made it difficult to read his lips.

Her hand was clean when she pulled it back from her neck. She sent Barclay a confused glance and received a smirk in response, which left her bewildered as to what had just transpired until she felt Vanessa pinch her arm sharply under the table. She must have missed one of the many hickeys Cormoran had dotted along her entire body, though she’d thought she’d been as thorough in covering them as he’d been in leaving them.

“Oi! What was that for? It’s going to bruise!” She whispered the words so as to not interrupt Ilsa’s story.

“You know what else is going to bruise? My heart, you secretive tit. What the hell just happened?” Vanessa hissed in her flat London accent.

Ilsa’s story ended abruptly, leaving the entire table staring at Robin and Vanessa. They straightened and pulled their best innocent faces. “Nothing!” Robin said, to a question which had not been asked.

“Oh, Robin, before we forget, Andy and I got you a gift. Just something small, mind, but we hope you’ll like it!”

Robin had a positive impression of Louise Hutchins from her long-ago housewarming party on Albury Street, and this life raft of conversational kindness only furthered her appreciation of Andy’s wife’s social graces. 

“Do open it, she’s eager to see what you think,” Hutchins encouraged. 

Robin removed the tissue from the cheery gift bag to find they’d bought her two silk headscarves, one of which was conveniently reversible, and a book which promised to teach the reader 58 different ways to tie it.

“We thought it could be useful to hide your hair when it’s not cold out. Save you wearing that beanie till it’s ragged,” Hutchins said proudly.

“Oh, thank you! This will be so helpful, and it won’t be too warm. I love it!” She carefully packed the gift back into its bag as Barclay produced a small, wrapped box from Nat’s handbag.

It looked like a jewellery box, and she looked up at him curiously as she undid the bow. He smiled kindly back at her in place of the mischievous expression he’d exhibited previously.

“Oh, Sam!” He’d given her a silver charm bracelet on which dangled a miniature shovel and a crowbar. It was a perfect symbol of the depth of their bond and the experiences which had built it. “It’s lovely, thank you.”

Cormoran gently took her wrist and helped her to clasp the bracelet, which she’d been struggling to do one-handed. “Cheers.”

“Vanessa and I have a present for you as well!” Ilsa exclaimed, pulling out a parcel the size of a shoebox which was wrapped in a lovely blush coloured paper.

“When you said you got Robin a present, I thought it was from the two of us.” Nick looked put off.

“Oh! No. I didn’t say it was, did I?”

“Well, no, but—I didn’t get her anything,” Nick protested. 

“Sorry!” Ilsa did not look sorry. She passed the gift across the table to Nick, who passed it to Cormoran beside him, and then finally to Robin.

She flipped it on its side to pick carefully at the corner of the impressive wrapping without tearing it, but when she looked up from the parcel, she noted meaningful glances being exchanged from the opposite corners of the table at which Ilsa and Vanessa sat.

Quite sure that something fishy was underfoot, Robin flipped the box to the other side and worked even more slowly at the tape there. The contents thumped ungracefully as they landed upside down from their previous orientation.

Robin saw Vanessa biting her lip out of the corner of her eye, and her shoulders shook slightly with supressed laughter. Unable to slow the process any longer, she finally removed the paper to expose a nondescript grey box. 

“Stop!” Ilsa yelled as she’d just begun to open the lid. “Wait ‘til you get home; you can’t open that here.” Her face was scorched red, and Robin almost wanted to continue opening it out of the hopeful suspicion that Ilsa would be more mortified by the gift than she.

“Wot, is it a sex toy or something?” Barclay asked, laughingly and unblushingly.

“Sam!” Nat looked mortified as she swatted at his arm, but it did nothing to deter him from continuing.

“Cos I don’t reckon she’ll be on her own tae need it any time soon!”

“Oh my God.”

Robin buried her head in her arms on the table, beginning to regret finding friends of her own. Matthew’s mates were soul-destroying to share air with, but they would have _never_ …

Abandoning the pretence that they were only best mates, Cormoran rubbed Robin’s back between her shoulder blades. 

“Oh my _God!”_

Ilsa’s squeal was delivered quite differently than Robin’s use of the same words.

“When did this happen?” Nick asked, interpreting the thoughts his wife was too overwhelmed to express.

“Just last night,” Cormoran replied, pulling Robin into his side so that she could bury her face into his chest rather than the small sliver of tablecloth between their empty plates.

“’S’all quite new, so, as you can appreciate, we weren’t exactly planning to tell everyone yet.” He glared at Barclay as he said the words, but his employee only laughed merrily.

“Payback, mate.”

“For fucking what?”

“Getting me kicked out of the Army.”

“You know I didn’t—For fuck’s sake, why would I hire you if I –"

“For makin’ me put up with this ridiculous tension for _two feckin’ years_ then, mate. Utter ridiculous shite. Couldnae have made yer move before now, really?”

Barclay laughed and nodded his agreement. 

“Wasn’t my move. It was hers,” he said fondly, nudging Robin’s shoulder. She groaned and refused to emerge.

Ilsa squealed with frustration. Cormoran turned his crinkly eyes to regard his second-oldest friend.

“I thought you’d be happy, Ils.”

“I thought I would be _involved!”_

Everyone laughed, even Robin, who finally faced the table full of her friends once more. She noted over Oli’s shoulder that a waiter was bringing a cake into the room and was touched at the gesture she hadn’t expected. 

As the table sang for her, Robin remembered the sentiment of downhillness and general misdirection she’d felt at twenty-nine. How wrong she’d been. At thirty, the good was only just beginning, and she had a feeling it would be good for a long, long time.


End file.
